


under the shape of years

by Revanche



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Emotional Hurt, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, M/M, Marvel Norse Lore, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-02-01 02:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21338560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revanche/pseuds/Revanche
Summary: Loki is, against all logic and evidence, alive. Thor finds him.
Relationships: Loki/Thor, Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (note: the Hel briefly mentioned in this is Loki's daughter in mythology, not a reference to Hela)

_higher, higher _  
tonight we raise the dead  
tonight we bury this in fire, fire  
under the shape of years  
and the weight that brought us here  
better believe the sea of changes  
and put these battered bones to rest  
nothing invisible or nameless  
leave no reason to confess  
and raise our voices  
higher, higher 

_\- the naked and famous, “higher”_

Loki remembers astonishingly little of the moment of his own death, just the vise-grip of Thanos’ hand crushing his throat, the pain and the darkness closing in. The next thing he remembers is waking in the halls of Hel, greeted by his daughter, who smiles kindly at him, the corner of her lip quirking into the closest semblance of kindliness that the dead half of her body can manage. Loki aches to spend forever with her, with his beloved Angrboda, with Jormugandr and Sleipnir and Fenrir as well, but there is something pulling him back to the world of the living, and his daughter confirms what he already knows.

“Father, it’s not your time. He needs you.”

(Loki doesn’t ask who “he” is. Why would he need to ask? Who else would it be?)

She kisses his forehead and sends him from her halls, or at least his soul, his spirit-form that is his essence distilled, neither jotun nor aesir. This form of his exists beyond the physical, but is still bound to a body, and in this case, that body is severely broken. So, Loki sets to work, weaving his _seidr_ to repair shattered bone, torn cartilage & tendons, the entire structure of his throat.

The length of time he spends mending his own broken body is one indefinable, torturous, and very possibly the most difficult and truly horrifying thing Loki has ever participated in or endured up until that moment.

And yet, he does it, because the mere thought of the alternative just being nothingness, trapped in a useless body or as a non-corporeal entity, is too monstrous to entertain. Besides, he has nowhere to go - his own daughter has made sure of that, and the halls of Valhalla were never an option for him, a mere casualty of a warlord and not a warrior himself.

He has to live. It’s the only option.

It doesn’t get much better when the tedious, gruesome work is finally done, and Loki awakes, choking, gasping hoarsely as he’s drawn back into his body. His voice, upon examination, is a ruined, gravelly rasp, but he still has a voice, and Loki counts that as a victory.

He realizes, quickly, that he will have to teach himself to speak all over again, like a child. This is not anywhere near as daunting as his surroundings, when he has the presence of mind to sit up, look around - he is surrounded by the corpses, in perfect stasis, of nearly everyone he had grown to know on the ship, a veritable fucking graveyard, a reminder of his own failure. 

He looks at the bodies, because he has to be sure, and of all the bodies he forced himself to examine, none of them are his brother. A glimmer of hope that carries him, perhaps childishly, through even more endless torment of being the last alive among the literal remains of his people.

He’s got all the time in the universe, stuck on a ship that is dead in every sense of the word, with only the semi-spoiled rations he’s managed to forage for, waiting for either death, rescue, or the restoration of his full powers to liberate him from this floating graveyard. None of those seem within reach, as the ship proves to only grow more grim with the amount of time Loki spends there.

He catches sight of himself in the reflections of glass on occasion, can make out too-sharp cheekbones and a mass of wild, matted hair, but his own self-image is so distorted by those weeks - months - _years_ he spent repairing his own body at the molecular level that if there is any change in what he remembers of his appearance, it no longer matters to him. He doesn’t have anyone to impress, after all.

Eventually, the presence of the bodies is too much for him to contend with, which Loki initially attributes to the experience of death changing him fundamentally, weakening his resistance to the vagaries of emotion, but upon deeper examination he thinks this may be more of what the humans refer to as “trauma” - every time he sees a body, recognizes the face, remembers them in life, it feels like Thanos’ grip around his throat all over again. Trapped in his own tomb, unable to die.

Luckily, a reprieve arrives, and not a moment too soon.


	2. Chapter 2

_itkenpä minä jotaki_  
_itken pientä veikkoani_  
_en ole sitten silmin nähnyt_  
_piennä kun sotahan lähti_

_There is something that I weep for_  
_I do weep for my young brother_  
_I have not seen him with my eyes_  
_Since he went to war at a young age_

_\- hedningarna, “veli (brother)”_

“You sure you’re ready for this?” Quill asks Thor for possibly the 400th time.

Thor inhales shakily, meeting Quill’s eyes. “Does it matter? They deserve a proper funeral.” He looks back at the ship, the horrific memories replaying in his mind like they happened moments ago instead of five years earlier, an emotional tide that he can’t let himself be swept away by. He said “they”, but there’s only one body in particular he can’t stop thinking about, a body he’s seen in his nightmares for five years, throat crushed, eyes of unseeing sea-glass green shot through with broken blood vessels. 

Quill eyes him skeptically. “It’s been five years, will there be anything left to bury? Or… set on fire or whatever you do?”

“Life support systems prevent the process of natural decay. We lost many in the initial escape,” Thor explains, flat-voiced, trying to detach himself from the tide of memories that he’s already relived more times than he can count, lost in a haze of drink and grief. He has to move forward, and something is pulling him back here to do what needs to be done. Closure, he’s heard Banner use that word before - he can’t get on with his life if he doesn’t deal with this, whatever it holds for him. 

He, Drax, Quill, and Nebula board the ship, and Nebula’s voice quavers as she reads her scanners - “Vitals detected aboard.” Thor readies Stormbreaker, expecting squatters, maybe pests.

It’s nothing of the sort. Amidst a sea of perfectly preserved corpses sits a ghost.

Loki, his Loki, but not a Loki he’s ever known, a Loki who had somehow survived five years (all alone, he didn’t have anyone, at least Thor HAD people with him in the depths of his depression, Loki was alone with the corpses of their people for Gods know how long) on this forsaken ship.

The years have been even more unkind to his brother than to himself, by all appearances - he’s nearly emaciated, a stark contrast to what the years have wrought on Thor’s own body, all death-white skin and skeletal limbs, a revenant wreathed in long, matted dark hair that hangs to past his waist.

But he’s alive.

Loki is _alive_.

(Loki was alive for the five years Thor mourned him.)

Thor’s vision blurs, blackening at the edges, and he feels himself collapse against Drax, wanting nothing more than to chase the afterimage of his brother’s ghost like a beacon in the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How are the corpses preserved? IDK, I'm not a space scientist. Go watch/read The Expanse, they do the space horror better than I do.
> 
> Also I don't remember what happened to the ship in Infinity War because I had a panic attack watching that movie and have since refused to ever watch it again. Sorry 'bout it.
> 
> Shoutout to Lucie/@LucyLovecraft on the Hedningarna Thorki songcall. :)


	3. Chapter 3

_“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” _

_― madeline miller, the song of achilles_

Loki can barely make sense of the figures in the doorway at first, only processing them by their silhouettes, which doesn’t give him any more information - all four are strangers to Loki’s frenzied mind. One of the larger figures moves forward, resolving into an image he thinks to be out of some fever dream at first.

“Brother,” Thor’s voice calls out, and his form (larger than he remembers, or maybe Loki has withered away) wavers, stumbles, is supported by the largest figure, a behemoth of a man, skin scarred with markings.

Loki tries to rise to his feet, but his muscles are weak from disuse, and if he had the capacity for such emotion he would laugh bitterly at the literal representation of them always, always being made weak by each other’s presence. A hack playwright would scoff at the heavy-handed symbolism.

Still, seeing his brother, if it’s not a mirage dreamt up by his addled mind, or another illusion of the afterlife, is not what he expected after however long he’s been adrift inside a mass grave of a ship. He’d call it welcome, if all positive emotions hadn’t been muted, stripped away, hidden beneath a fog of isolation.

The smallest figure, a cyborg by the glint of metal on a bald head, keeps their weapon trained on him. “He shouldn’t be alive.” _You’re right,_ Loki thinks mirthlessly. _And yet, here I am._

Thor is back on his feet, and is already approaching, stepping around the carnage preserved by years adrift in space. “Loki,” he says, almost to himself, voice breaking, He drops Mjolnir, then falls to his knees in front of him with a heavy thud, pulling him into an embrace that Loki is now absolutely sure is real, no magic could replicate this, Thor sobbing into his shoulder, the warmth of his arms wrapped around him.

Loki finds himself embracing back, grabbing weakly at Thor’s cloak, noticing it takes more effort than he remembers to reach his arms around him as he lets Thor pull him even closer. The movement pulls him off balance, but he doesn’t think he’s ever trusted in anything nearly as much as he trusts right now, in this moment, that Thor will keep him safe, protect him like he always has.

_Even when Thanos crushed the life out of me, there was nothing Thor could have done._ Loki knows this as he knows the moment of his death, replayed over and over and over as he pieced his own body back together with seidr. 

Thor’s sobs resolve into words - “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over, and all Loki can think to do is utter the words swirling in the miasma of his brain.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Loki manages to whisper, feeling scar tissue scrape and tighten in his throat as he tries to form the sounds. He buries his face in Thor’s hair, long again, but matted, streaked with gray - the passage of time has ravaged him just as it has Loki, and it makes Loki’s heart ache to think it would all be based on his guilt. Of course Thor would take this upon himself, blame himself for something that isn’t his fault, because that’s just who he is. That’s who he’s always been.

And he’s here. Alive, whole, embracing him as if the years separating them were centuries (he thinks it cannot possibly be that long, but what does he know?).

Loki allows himself to cry, finally, sobbing out a paean of gratitude into Thor’s neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of it for now, I may or may not write more, I just. I needed them to be together again okay.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't going to be a long fic, nor do I think it'll ever be finished. I just really needed to get it out post-Endgame and I finally have it at a point where I'm reasonably proud of it.
> 
> Check out my art at @RevancheDraws on Twitter!


End file.
